Democratic National Committee ends its sponsorship of Women’s March

This announcement, which as of this moment I’ve found almost solely on right-wing websites (you won’t see it in the New York Times or PuffHo), is a serious blow to the Women’s March, since they’ve lost an arm of the Democratic Party, almost certainly because of the antisemitism of the women’s March leaders. This report is from Haaretz, the most left-wing of the venues reporting this:

I won’t belabor this report, as there doesn’t seem to have been any announcement by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) or any explanation, either. The lost sponsorship appears to have been found simply from the DNC’s absence on the Women’s March list of sponsors. As Haaretz (explains

When the list of sponsors for the 2019 national Women’s March was published over the weekend, it became apparent that numerous organizations who had joined the March in its first two years, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and Emily’s List had chosen not to partner with the group, following controversy over the refusal of three of the March’s co-chairs to clearly denounce Rev. Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam and his anti-Semitic and homophobic positions and charges of hostility to Jewish women within the group.

Between Sunday and Tuesday, additional sponsors, including the DNC, along with the National Organization for Women and the NAACP who had appeared on the list of sponsors, were gone.

. . . Also Monday, in what appeared part of the effort to stem the tide of opposition to the national organization, it was announced that the group had included three Jewish women to a new 32 member steering committee. The Jewish members are transgender rights activist Abby Stein, Union for Reform Judaism staffer April Baskin and Jewish diversity activist Yavilah McCoy.

I wonder what the new “progressive” but anti-Israel contingent of Democratic women in the House of Representatives would say about this.

24 Comments

Those new members in congress may be trying to figure out why it’s not okay to be a racist any longer in congress but fine if you are president. Steve King verses Trump It is confusing but they better watch it.

Aligned interests with the racist who happens to be the most politically powerful person in the U.S. Also a calculated recognition that supporting a racist leader is not fatal to your ambitions within the party.

When I’m feeling particularly ornery towards Republicans I think it is required for ambitions in that party. But then I cool down a little and figure it is only necessary but not sufficient. Then I cool down some more and decide I don’t really care why they do it – they’ve made their choice (well, you know what I mean).

The fundamental question we are coming down to is how far down the rat-hole the Republicans in congress are willing to go with Trump. Back in June 2016, the now-leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, California congressman Kevin McCarthy, was secretly recorded telling the other members of the Republican leadership that he was convinced Donald Trump was on Vladimir Putin’s payroll. Since then, of course, there is all the more reason to believe Trump has been compromised by the Russians.

At some point these people have to ask themselves how much longer they can stick with Trump — for the good of their Party, for the good of their nation, and (obviously most important to most of them) for their own, personal political fortunes. I take heart that 11 Republicans in the senate today broke ranks with Trump over his attempt to ease economic sanctions against Putin’s “favorite oligarch,” Oleg Deripaska (and wonder what the fuck is wrong with the other 42 Republicans in the senate that they did not do the same).

Seeing where the Republicans finally reach their breaking point is going to make for fascinating political watching — perilous for our nation, but fascinating.

Republican reps and senators who know or believe that Trump is a traitor and have not acted to remove him from office are every bit as much traitors as Trump is. So far, Putin has been successful beyond his wildest dreams. But to my mind the Republican Party is much more blameworthy in all this than Trump himself.

Being a white nationalist can get you elected in Iowa but you can lose your place on all committees in congress. Not sure if they are ready to go after the Anti Semitic members yet. Maybe if you are Muslim you are good to go.

Trump hasn’t had a thing to say about the the Steve King contretemps yet. And he probably won’t, since he can’t afford to alienate his hardcore nativist base, which agrees with King’s white-supremacist sentiments. It’s the same reason Trump was loath to disassociate himself from David Duke’s endorsement during the 2016 campaign, and loath to criticize the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.

I’m comforted. Many on the left seem to have found the will oppose something done wrong by those on their own end of the political spectrum. Hopefully this means that the left can be both progressive and liberal rather than progressive at the expense of liberal values.
I wonder if those on the right can also find their soul.

Heck, I’d be perfectly happy if they came up with an explanation that stayed positive. You don’t need to attack anyone, just put out something like this:

“We at the DNC strive for inclusiveness. While we recognize there are women with strong opinions on both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, as sponsors we hope to see Women’s Marches have room for all women seeking to work for women’s rights, without litmus tests on other issues…”

Yes, that would be perfectly fine as well. Though I would like to see some recognition of the antisemitism. To say “opinions on both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict” doesn’t in any way address the serious antisemitism of the WMI leaders. They haven’t just spoken out against Israel, but have been exposed as extreme antisemites in general.

I’d say in this case that the leadership is bigoted but the event itself didn’t start out that way and doesn’t have to be that way. Thus, in this case, a sponsor distinguishing between the Women’s March-the-Organization (supportable, if it returns to inclusiveness) and the Women’s March-the-leadership (bigoted individuals we do not support) is okay.

On the one hand, I think it’s good news that these organizations are refusing to cosign on the WM’s co-organizers’ anti-Semitism.

On the other hand, I almost wonder if this isn’t just going to feed into some “regressive progressive’s” confirmation bias. A lot of anti-Semitism is conspiracy theory, after all.

Slightly off topic: in the early 2010s, I started reading up on hate groups. The conservatives I encountered (well, online) would lose it if I brought up terrorism from the far Right. But now, a lot of progressives seem to be in denial when I bring up the far Left’s anti-Semitism. They also have crazy double standards about terrorism.

A similar split in the left is occuring in the UK, with the Labour party facing persistent claims of anti-semitism. These are fears which Jeremy “I never met a terrorist I didnt like” Corbyn does little to allay. Part of the reason, which few people will acknowledge openly, is that a number of the 3 million muslims in the UK hate Jews, and there are only 3 hundred thousand of them. Maajid Nawaz is one of the few people to openly confront this, and he gets villified for doing so.